Ubuntu
zfs-linux package

Prevent bpool (or pools with /BOOT/) to be upgraded

Bug #1847389 reported by BertN45
10
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
zfs-linux (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

The bpool status is confusing. Should I upgrade the pool or is it on purpose that the bpool is like this. I do no like to see this warning after installing the system on ZFS from scratch.

See screenshot

Revision history for this message
BertN45 (lammert-nijhof) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Richard Laager (rlaager) wrote :

Do NOT upgrade your bpool.

The dangerous warning is a known issue. There has been talk of an upstream feature that would allow a nice fix for this, but nobody has taken up implementing it yet. I wonder how hard it would be to temporarily patch zpool status / zpool upgrade to not warn about / upgrade a pool named bpool.

Revision history for this message
Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks) wrote :

We wrote on another bug report BertN45 to not upgrade your bpool. Only power users will use zpool status command to list and we expect them to know the implication.

I think I'll retarget this bug for preventing bpool upgrade.

summary: - Confusing zpool status in Ubuntu 19.10 installed onZFS
+ Prevent bpool (or pools with /BOOT/) to be upgraded
Revision history for this message
Max Jowi (maxjowi) wrote :

How exactly does it break booting?

I did a zpool upgrade bpool on two machines (one VM and one laptop) before reading this warning.
Both seems to boot just fine after the upgrade.

Revision history for this message
BertN45 (lammert-nijhof) wrote :

Well the people involved in the design and maintenance Richard Laager and Didier Roche warned me NOT to upgrade, so I did not upgrade the pool. My bug was about the confusions caused by that message.

Revision history for this message
Richard Laager (rlaager) wrote :

If the pool has an _active_ (and not "read-only compatible") feature that GRUB does not understand, then GRUB will (correctly) refuse to load the pool. Accordingly, you will be unable to boot.

Some features go active immediately, and others need you to enable some filesystem-level feature or take some other action to go from enabled to active. The features that are left disabled in the upstream Root-on-ZFS HOWTO (that I manage) are disabled because GRUB does not support them. At best, you never use them and it's fine. At worst, you make one active and then you can't boot. Since you can't use them without breaking booting, there is no point in having them enabled.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package zfs-linux - 0.8.3-1ubuntu12

---------------
zfs-linux (0.8.3-1ubuntu12) focal; urgency=medium

  [ Jean-Baptiste Lallement ]
  [ Didier Roche ]
  * debian/patches/4100-disable-bpool-upgrade.patch:
    - On ubuntu, upgrade of bpool is disabled to prevent users to break their
      system by upgrading to features not supported by GRUB. (LP: #1847389)

 -- Jean-Baptiste Lallement <email address hidden> Tue, 14 Apr 2020 11:14:33 +0200

Changed in zfs-linux (Ubuntu):
status: New → Fix Released
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